C. Thompson Boling

The Divorce

 

Maybe it was a bat

              or an angel

that halved the great olive tree in the courtyard.

Its splintered trunk

             dividing

             a whole,

             a thousand gnarled knots

into two complete hemispheres.

             One East.

             One West.

Love

             scattered now

             like the waxy oblong leaves.

 

[....]

C. Thompson Boling

             Thinner now like the

             orbital drupes.

The fleshy outer layers of this

was always protecting

             something harder.

             Something sweeter.

C. Thompson Boling

THE TRUTH

 

The war staged in the kitchen

was adrift now and was settling

somewhere

between the stalks of the tobacco plants

behind the red barn. Roots, leaves, tops all

maturing in the black soil.

It was midway through

the summer when the rain stopped.

Dust was collecting in sweet pools.

It licked our cracked boots and settled

in the electric fields like peppered moths on tree bark.

We were once visible to the current.

We were visible once, but now

there is too much space between.

[....]

C. Thompson Boling

So we spend our afternoons and our evenings

filling the empty spaces

with pine needles and pollen sacs.

In the mornings,

we watch the Great White Herons

take flight from their reedy beds.

Lying on our backs,

we count the milky plumes as they fall

(two)

(then three).

It never belonged to me

your heart, bell shaped and fine.

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © C. Thommpson Boling. White Whale Review, issue 1.3